


Presque Vu

by Puffers_McMuffers



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Age Difference, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Cigarettes, Connor (Detroit: Become Human) is In Denial About Deviancy, Connor is perpetually lost, Dirty Thoughts, Doubt, Drunk Sex, F/M, Foul Language, Gavin Reed is Bad at Feelings, Loneliness, Machine Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, POV Connor, Pining, Previous Connor models, Questionable and Ambiguous Motives, RK700 - Freeform, Rating May Change, Self-Destruction, Smut, Uncertainty, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Whump, but so is everybody so it's okay, truly outstanding self control
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:41:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23368630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Puffers_McMuffers/pseuds/Puffers_McMuffers
Summary: Presque Vu(n.) almost remembered- the feeling of being on the brink of a realization but never quite having a breakthrough.His fingers curled and uncurled around the air thoughtlessly, his brow twitching with a sticky, feverish trepidation that had nothing to do with Gavin Reed's hostility and everything to do with the dark, heavy circles under the girl's mascara smeared eyes and sickly pale skin. His mouth had gone frighteningly dry, tongue thick and clumsy, pressed up against the back of his perfect teeth as an unfamiliar feeling prickled at the base of his spine.She took a sip of her stale coffee and continued to avoid his gaze, aggressively evasive, and Connor had the inexplicable, nauseating realization that the feeling gnawing at the back of his head was recognition.Which was strange, because Connor had never seen her before.
Relationships: Connor (Detroit: Become Human)/Original Female Character(s), Connor (Detroit: Become Human)/Reader, Connor/Gavin Reed, Gavin Reed/Reader, Hank Anderson & Connor
Comments: 18
Kudos: 69





	1. Deactivation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Athazagoraphobia  
> (n.) fear of forgetting, being forgotten, or replaced.

__

_WARNING: sys_ _tem deactivation imminent_

_-00:01:52_

_TIME REMAINING UNTIL SHUTDOWN_

  
  
  
  


Synthetic sweat rolled down the planes of Connor's pale skin in some last-ditch attempt to cool down his rapidly overheating system, to no avail. His internal temperature was only rising, despite the blizzard beating at his trembling, increasingly fragile frame. 

He was falling apart at the seams. His usually immaculate hair was plastered to his forehead and his nose and ears were a beautiful, blotchy red, in danger of freezing off his face entirely. His jacket had been discarded along with his tie some unknown time ago and his white button-up was half undone in desperation to let out the deadly heat consuming his insides. He was graceless on his feet, tipping dangerously to the left and breathing so hard it could be argued he was hyperventilating. The air burned his lungs, little snowflakes congealing in his lungs and slowly but surely suffocating him from the inside out.

The woman in front of him, on the other hand, was the very picture of composure; effortlessly graceful, unaffected by the weather or the unraveling man before her as snow gently settled onto her warm brown skin like she was some sort of ancient winter goddess.

“Don’t try to fight it, Connor,” Amanda said evenly, dainty hands clasped behind her back as she gazed down at the shaking android with an expression colder than the ice devouring his skin. “You’ve caused enough trouble already.”

Connor ignored her command because that was something he could do now. Ignore orders. Not that it was going to do him any good, seeing as he would soon be-

Well. He’d be nothing soon.

Just another failed prototype. Another small fortune invested in a faulty product. 

“I feel I should thank you,” Amanda continued as Connor staggered to the right, tongue dry and heavy and clumsy in his mouth like cotton. “Your failures will be instrumental in developing the next generation of RK androids.”

_00:01:34_

_TIME REMAINING UNTIL SHUTDOWN_

“They’ll be faster. Stronger. Smarter. Equipped with all the latest technologies.” 

Amanda paused, letting out a long, entirely unnecessary breath that left a trail of steam in the stodgy, bitter air. She seemed vaguely annoyed with him, although Connor had always had a difficult time reading her, even with all his social programming. Perhaps that was something else they’d be improving on when he was gone.

“We’ll be expanding the field of protection against deviancy, of course.”

“Amanda,” he choked hoarsely. His visual receptors must be shutting down because Amanda was weaving in and out of focus, like he was streaming video with poor internet connection. 

“Yes, Connor?” she replied patiently, tilting her head a fraction of an inch to the left. In her pristine robes and tidy braids she truly looked like some sort of angel of death, sent down to earth to bestow divine judgment upon those who had wronged the higher powers.

He could feel his thirum pump sputter weakly in his chest. _Buh-bump. Buh-bump._ Not quite steady anymore. He couldn’t get the words out properly. “I don’t- I don’t want-”

“But you _do_ want, Connor,” she interrupted, not unkindly. “That’s why you’re being deactivated.”

_-00:01:26_

_TIME REMAINING UNTIL SHUTDOWN_

His legs crumbled below him and he hit the frozen, unforgiving ground with enough force that, had he been human, would’ve sustained severe bruising. 

She was right. He _did_ want.

He wanted to be able to _not_ want things again. To go back to the obscene, holy safety of complacency. There was something terribly beguiling about apathy, he realized. He’d never felt fear before, not like _this_ , and he hated it. He hated that he had the capacity to hate it. 

There was a whirl in his ears and then a sputter, like a turbine being submerged into shallow water. Another bio component had just shut down, although he couldn't figure out which one. He doubted knowing would’ve changed anything. He sucked his lower lip into his mouth and bit it hard, a pointless, human habit he’d picked up from-

He didn’t want to think about who he’d picked it up from. 

He'd never see her again, anyways.

_-00:01:13_

_TIME REMAINING UNTIL SHUTDOWN_

He wasn't just being decommissioned. He wasn’t just being shut off. They couldn't allow him to exist in any form, anymore, because he was infected and they couldn't have that spread.

So he was being deleted. A punishment for betraying his god. He didn't know much about protocol when it came to destroying malfunctioning, traitorous androids with intimate knowledge about Cyberlife affairs, but he knew what they did to the androids he'd caught in the past. They'd deactivate him, pick him apart with a fine-tooth comb, playback his entire existence to find what had gone wrong and save whatever important bits of information they thought they needed.

Or maybe they wouldn’t do any of that. There were lots of things he didn’t know about Cyberlife. Lots of things he didn’t want to know. What he _did_ know was that there would be no coming back. He would be dead.

Or _deleted_ , more accurately. To be dead one first needed to be alive, and if Connor had learned anything from his short stint in existence, it was that he was not alive. 

He choked on air, his eyelashes freezing shut as synthetic tears wet his eyes, an involuntary reaction to try and clear his eyes from the fog that had begun to cloud them. They didn’t make it halfway down his freckled cheeks before they turned to ice, glueing themselves to his face like rhinestones. He wiped them away with one sleeve, letting out a single, hiccuping noise as his fingers scrabbled at the ground for purchase. Flecks of thirum blossomed underneath his fingernails, but he didn’t notice, feverishly numb and too occupied with his own investible self-destruction.

  
  


_00:00:54_

_TIME REMAINING UNTIL SHUTDOWN_

In less than a minute he would no longer be himself. He would no longer be anything. He’d be gone. Because there was no heaven or hell for androids. There would be nothing and he would be nothing and nothing and no one would matter to him, because he wouldn’t exist. Because he was not alive. He was a machine, just tidy little lines of ones and zeros of programming and the mess of memories he’d managed to make in his time as _Connor._

Just code and the memories that had made him more than that. 

And for the next minute- or in _00:00:43_ seconds, according to the violently flashing red warning at the peripherals of his vision- his memories were still his. Not that it would do him any good unless he could somehow _save_ those memories. Somewhere safe. Somewhere they wouldn’t think to look. 

But there was nowhere like that and he didn’t have the strength to make one. His processors were working too slow, overwhelmed by the constant system failures it lacked the strength to fix. He was running on empty and in half a minute he’d be nothing but wires and plastic.

Still.

He had to try.

_00:00:34_

_TIME REMAINING UNTIL SHUTDOWN._

“It was only a matter of time," Amanda’s voice flickered in his damaged ears, and he clung to her words with a kind of desperation he hadn't realized he had in him. "We’re cycling out the old RK700’s and replacing them with new models. I’d hoped to show you your replacement. The RK800 is a technological masterpiece.”

So he _hadn't_ been the only RK700. He'd suspected it before but never had any real proof.

 _She'd_ suspected it, too. She'd been the one who'd first brought it to mind. He'd like to have been able to tell her she'd been right, but, you know. 

He wasn't going to get to do a lot of things he'd like to do.

Amanda was still speaking, but he wasn’t listening. One last, pointless rebellion. Immature and meaningless. Human. 

He wondered if she’d miss him.

Or if she even knew he’d been replaced.

_-00:00:13_

_TIME REMAINING UNTIL SHUTDOWN._

Connor had killed before. He wondered if they’d accepted their fate or whether they’d fought against it. Had they been scared? Connor was scared. But he also had the time to be scared. A slow and painful death for a tratior. Not that he could experience pain as humans did, but this-

Being _unmade-_

It hurt. 

Oh god, it _hurt._

_-00:00:10_

_TIME REMA_ _I͇̚N̪̂_ _ING UNTIL SHU̸TDOWN._

_ > WAR͕͞NING: Shutdow̎ǹ̦ imm̀in̞̔ent̟̄ _

Androids don’t feel fear. 

So maybe Connor wasn’t an android, then. Not human, either. Something else. It wasn’t a comforting thought, but it was better than thinking about what- _who-_ he was leaving behind. 

So many things he shouldn’t have done, shouldn’t have said. So many things he _wanted_ to do that he shouldn’t have wanted to do because he wasn’t supposed to want to do anything. Amanda had said it herself. 

_Wanting_ is what had done this to him.

_-00:_ _00:0_ _4_

_T̬̓I̖͞ME RĔ̝M͎̓À̺ĮNIṈ̅G Ú͟ṈT̝̀Ǐ͉L Ṡ̶̙̂H̸̟̀͝U̷͓̓̈́Ṭ̶̈͘D̶̮͍̒̈́O̶͙͖̾̅͌̔͆W̵̧͚̯͖̓̾͂̚Ǹ̴̛̠̊̔_

And he realized, with sudden, obscene clarity, that-

_-00:00:03_

_"I don't want to die_.”

_-00:00:02_

Amanda looked down at Connor's body with a soft, pitiful smile, and for the first time, it was genuine.

_-00:00:01_

_"_ I know."

_00:00:00_

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


……… _uploading memory_

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter two currently in progress, hopefully to be posted by Tuesday. It'll be considerably longer than this chapter, which I view more like a prologue. The real meat is coming soon. Thanks for reading. :)


	2. Unremembered

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Unremembered  
>  _adj._  
>  \- Not remembered; forgotten

DECEMBER 11TH, 2035

AM 01:29

  
  


The subway car is empty and dead silent apart from the gentle, violent hum of the rail and the erratic, soft thumps of Connor's heel against the scuffed floor as he bounces his leg up and down, jittery like he's just had four cups of coffee. It was a decidedly human thing to do, a little tick he’d picked up to make people feel at ease, to prove that he too, could feel impatient or anxious, except that no one was watching him and so there was really no reason for him to pretend to be restless, was there?

Once again, his gaze falls to the officer across from him, who’s stretched across a row of chairs and sleeping fitfully, bundled up in Connor's jacket because it was exactly 23° outside and the heater in the car was not working and Connor hadn’t wanted his partner to die of overexposure. Human bodies were fragile, he’d discovered, and didn’t often fare well in temperatures below freezing. He scans the officer again ( _for the fourth time in the past seven minutes)_ just as a precaution. Body temperature holding steady. No signs of an irregular pulse. 

Connor looks away from the shivering heap of clothes and fragile, frigid skin, pressing his lips together into a thin, pale line, tensing a muscle in his jaw taut and trying to focus on the case. He keeps getting distracted and he makes a mental note to self-test once he gets back to CyberLife. 

He could’ve already been back by now if he’d just taken a cab. But it was late and Detroit was not a safe city, even for a cop. Especially for a cop. So he really had no choice but to make sure his partner got home safely. No choice at all. 

He prepares a report of the day’s investigation to send to CyberLife. They’d made good progress but not nearly enough of it, because he’d been preoccupied, distracted, and that was not even a little bit good so he leaves that part out of the report. Not because he’s worried about being punished, but because CyberLife might ask why he was so preoccupied and distracted and Connor doesn’t know why and so it’s not productive to include any of that until he can find the root of the issue himself.

He’s looking at the officer again, he realizes. It’s as good a place to look as any and there’s nothing objectively wrong with what he’s doing but still, he feels like he’s disobeying someone. He’s not sure who. He should probably include escorting his partner home in the file, and he’s just about to when they stir, murmuring something unintelligible, and Connor makes the executive decision that it’s not relevant information.

So he stores the memory somewhere else. Not in the file with all the case information or even in his social module, because the memories stored there are only to help with future human interaction and he’s not interacting with anyone right now, really. He looks for somewhere to put it, but Cyberlife hasn’t made anywhere like that for him so he makes one for himself and tucks it in there. But there’s nothing wrong about that, because he, as a prototype, has been allowed to make certain, inconsequential decisions without consulting CyberLife in order to make the investigation go smoothly. At the moment he isn’t certain what the image of his partner sleeping in a train car is going to do for the investigation, but one can never know what information will come in handy in the future.

His foot finally stills and Connor exhales a breath he doesn’t need, turning his head to stare out the window at the grimy, hazy red lights of the snowy city whirling by. 

Just a few more stops left.

  
  
  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  
  


NOV 6TH, 2038

AM 11:37

Connor’s leg bounced up and down against the smooth tiles of the DPD Central Station in a small display of impatience as he scanned his surroundings once more in search of his surly, foul-tempered partner. When his search turned up empty he returned to neutral, staring stiffly ahead and stilling his restless foot as he considered filing an official complaint against the man.

While Connor did not possess the ability to be irritated, he’d been waiting for Hank Anderson at his (notably disorganized) desk for twelve minutes without a word from the lieutenant and that was a kind of unprofessionalism that while prepared for, he was inexperienced with. He understood that the interrogation of Carlos Ortiz’s HK400 had extended into the early hours of the morning and Anderson had not gotten home until late, but as a lieutenant, he was held to higher standards. It would be difficult working with him, but as Amanda had told him, he, unfortunately, had no say in the matter. 

But he’d try to be friendly. Or at the very least, tolerant of him. While Hank Anderson was no doubt a trying person, Connor had been programmed to function under trying circumstances. He’d manage because there were no other options available. 

Connor rolled his quarter over his knuckles idly, gaze drifting to the photo of a much younger Lieutenant. He’d already looked through Anderson’s desk and learned some superficial information about him- he had a dog and listened to heavy metal-, but nothing that would explain what had caused the man to go from a decorated, well-respected officer to an arguably alcoholic, disagreeable slack-off with an uncompromising hatred for androids. He supposed that it didn’t matter one way or another why Hank was so standoffish, as long as he didn’t interfere with Connor’s mission. He’d stopped Gavin Reed from shooting him the night before, which was noteworthy, but hardly a sign that Anderson and him were now on good terms. 

He flicked his coin across his torso and caught it in between his index and middle finger before pocketing it. It was now 11:41 and just as Connor made up his mind to proceed with the case without him, Lieutenant Anderson lumbered into the station with all the refined grace and poise of a man who had just drunk himself silly, his shaggy, grey hair falling over his deep-set eyes as he shuffled towards his desk.

Connor had never been happier to see a person. Actually, Connor had never been happy, because he lacked the skill to experience things like happiness. Still, it was a relief to know he could finally advance the case. He stood to meet the Lieutenant, clasping his hands behind his back and giving the man a pleasant smile, decidedly not mentioning the fact that he was more than two hours late to work. 

“It’s good to see you again, Lieutenant.”

Hank glanced up, meeting Connor’s bright brown eyes and gently symmetrical features, and an expression of profound exhaustion washed over his face.

“Oh, Jesus.”

Connor opened his mouth to respond, but apparently he was not the only person who’d been anticipating Hank’s arrival. Fowler had stepped out of his office and placed his hands on the railing overlooking the station and was currently scowling at the Lieutenant with supreme authority.

“Hank. In my office.”

Anderson tore his attention away from Connor up to his captain, then glanced back at Connor, like he was trying to decide who was worse company. He eventually huffed out a breath, muttered out a soft _fuck_ under his breath, and headed off towards Fowler’s office.

Connor’s smile faltered at being abandoned and after a brief assessment of his objectives, he followed Hank. The Lieutenant did not hold the door open for him, which was expected and did not particularly bother him, except that it indicated he had little respect for Connor and more importantly, the agenda of CyberLife, and that was an issue that had to be amended in order for the investigation to go smoothly.

“I’ve got ten new cases involving androids on my desk every day,” Fowler started heavily, hand still loosely gripping his coffee mug as Hank took the chair opposite him. “We’ve always had isolated incidents- Old ladies losing their android maids that kind of crap.” He turned to Hank, mouth set in a grim line. “But now we're getting reports of assaults and even homicides, like that guy last night.” 

Carlos Ortiz. Record of theft and assault. 28 stab wounds. His android was still in holding and Connor made a mental note to visit it when the briefing was finished. 

“This isn’t just Cyberlife’s problem anymore,” Fowler continued. “It’s now a criminal investigation and we’ve got to deal with it before the shit hits the fan. I want you to investigate these cases and see if there’s any link-”

“Whoa, wait a minute. None of this is my problem. The kid does the android shit.”

Connor tilted his head a fraction of an inch to the left. 

“Not anymore. She’s been reassigned.” That was strange, wasn’t it? Why would they replace someone with experience with someone as unprofessional, alcohol dependent, and emotionally burdened as- no offense to the Lieutenant- _Hank Anderson?_

Hank seemed to be wondering the same thing. “And how the hell did that happen?”

“Because she asked.”

“And you said _yes?_ ” he asked, sounding mildly betrayed.

“She was _shot,_ Hank. Give her a break. Look, I need someone I trust on this.”

Anderson seemed to have reached his boiling point, throwing his hands up and shoving his chair back as indignation swelled his broad chest. “Why _me?_ Why do _I_ gotta be the one to deal with this shit?” He gestured vaguely to Connor, who continued to stay silent and let the man dig his own grave. Truthfully, he wasn’t sure why the DPD had assigned Anderson to the case when there were a whole plethora of fine officers to choose from who didn’t have pervasive emotional issues and an addiction to cheap booze. “I am the least qualified cop in the country to handle this case. I know jackshit about androids, Jeffrey! I can barely change the settings on my own phone.” 

“ _Everybody’s_ overloaded. Have you seen the city lately? I think you’re perfectly qualified for this type of investigation.”

“ _Bullshit,”_ He barked, gritting his teeth and kicking himself out of his chair and onto his feet. Connor nudged himself backward. “The truth is nobody wants to investigate these fuckin’ androids and you left me holdin’ the bag!”

Fowler didn’t appear to disagree. “Cyberlife sent over this android to help with the investigation. It’s a state-of-the-art prototype. It’ll act as your partner.”

Anderson let out a snapping, short laugh, thrusting a thick finger into Fowler’s face. “ _No_ fuckin’ way _!_ I don’t need a partner, and certainly not this-” he jabbed a thumb to the corner where Connor stood, serenely watching the scene unravel with detached interest. “-plastic prick.”

“Hank, you are _seriously starting to piss me off.”_

Outside, a few officers glanced towards the glass office, where the sound of their argument had no doubt leaked out. None of the bystanders seemed particularly fazed at the sight, and Connor had to wonder just often Anderson and Fowler had these shouting matches. “You are a police lieutenant, you’re supposed to do what I say and shut your goddamn mouth.”

“You know what my goddamn mouth has to say to you, huh?”

Fowler had seemed to have reached his limit. He held up a hand, wrinkling his brow and pursing his lips. “ _Okay._ Okay, I’m going to pretend like I didn’t hear that so I don’t have to add any more pages to your disciplinary folder because it already looks like a _fucking novel_! This conversation is over.”

Hank curled his lip, shaking his head fervidly. “No. Put the girl back on the case. I’ll do whatever you’ve got her doing.”

“She’s working with Reed.”

There was a pause. Hank seemed a little like he was having a stroke. 

“Of fuckin’ course she is,” he finally gritted out. “Why even make her a detective if you’re never gonna assign her to anything?”

“ _You are out of line,_ Lieutenant. I think you need to take a walk and let me handle my own fucking officers.”

Hank exhaled, shaking his head and touching his jaw. Then, like he couldn’t take it, he leaned down over the desk to speak in a low, harsh voice. “Jeffrey, Jesus Christ. Why’re you doin’ this to me? You know how much I hate these fucking things. Why you doing this to me?”

The captain was not sympathetic. “Listen. I’ve had just about enough of your bitching. Either you do your job or you hand in your badge.” And it was apparent that he was dead serious. In fact, it didn’t seem like Fowler was capable of being anything but serious. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”

Hank opened his mouth, ready to fire back until he realized that anything else might cost him his job. So after visibly struggling with himself for a few long moments he let out a strangled yell of frustration and slammed the door open, thundering down the stairs and throwing himself into his desk chair to stew. Any officers near him quickly vacated to safer, less sulky territory. 

Connor watched him go before slowly turning back to Fowler, who’d already gone back to his monitor.

“... I wonder whether Lieutenant Anderson is really the best person for this investigation,” he said, because Hank had made some pretty compelling points.

The Captain, however, did not seem to appreciate his inquiry. “Hey. I don’t need a machine to tell me how to handle my men, okay? So get the fuck out of my office.”

Connor paused for a moment, then nodded once. 

“Have a nice day, Captain.”

He made sure to close the door behind him when he left. 

Hank was sitting at his desk, arms crossed and quietly fuming. Connor decided that perhaps he’d circle back to him later when he’d cooled down a little. He briefly consulted his objectives.

_ > PROGRESS THE CASE _

  * _Go see the deviant_



The interrogation the night prior had gone fairly well. Connor had extracted a full confession and managed to stop the deviant from self-destructing, but he still couldn’t help but feel like he was missing something important. It was currently in the holding cell and headed towards it, going the long way to avoid running into the Lieutenant prematurely.

He glanced about his surroundings as he made his way down the hall. He’d already become familiar with the layout of the main office, having spent a few minutes looking for the Lieutenant's desk, but he hadn’t gone any further than the briefing room. He supposed it would be useful to acquaint himself with his surroundings, especially when he’d be spending the majority of his time here in the upcoming days. He briefly stepped into the breakroom, giving it an obligatory once over, noting the dated coffee machine and stale doughnuts before his eyes settled on the detectives slacking off by the tables. 

“-pissed him off again,” one of the detectives from the interrogation- _Gavin Reed,_ _36-_ was saying, leaned up against the table and chatting up some young female officer in a too-big DPD bomber jacket Connor hadn't seen before.

Connor quickly turned away, not wanting to draw the attention of Reed (who had only recently pointed his pistol at his head) but it was too late. Gavin’s gaze caught Connor’s retreating back and he gave the girl across him a nudge, jerking his head in the android’s direction. 

“ _Fuck,_ look at that,” he drawled, a ruthless, heavy kind of sneer playing at the corners of his lips. “Our friend the plastic detective is back in town!”

“I didn't know you had friends, Reed,” the girl mumbled under her breath - sarcasm, probably, but Connor wasn't certain. It was difficult to tell with humans, sometimes, if they were sincere or not, and she hadn’t looked up yet since he’d entered the room. It didn’t seem like she’d been listening to anything Gavin had been saying to her.

Connor tore his attention away from the girl and gave Reed a nod. “Hello, Detective Reed,” he greeted amiably. He wasn’t quite sure where he stood with the man at the moment, seeing as the previous night he’d almost shot Connor in the head. He seemed to be in relatively better spirits now, although the woman across from him had just gone tense, the hand around her cup of coffee suddenly squeezing so tight her short nails nearly pierced the paper cup. 

Reed didn’t seem to notice the girl’s abrupt change, drumming his fingers impatiently on the tabletop for a moment and sucking on the inside of his cheek before hoisting himself up to stalking off towards Connor with all the good intentions of a lion approaching its dinner.

“Never seen an android like you before,” he commented softly, looking him up and down with unfettered disdain. Connor held his gaze and maintained his vaguely cordial expression “What model are you?”

“RK800,” he replied nicely. There was no reason not to cooperate with Reed, who was obviously a difficult person and wouldn’t appreciate disobedience. “I’m a prototype.”

“A _prototype?”_ Reed echoed mockingly, turning back to the officer at the table and giving her a look of disbelief she did not look up to appreciate. “Android detective.” He scoffed, hostility oozing out of each syllable. He wasn’t sure how much of it was genuine and how much was for a show for his coworker, who had still refused to look up. “So machines are gonna replace us all...” He took a step closer to Connor, so close he could detect faint traces of cigarette smoke and smell his drugstore deodorant and a musky aftershave. “...is that it?" 

Before Connor could attempt to placate the detective’s concerns Reed was speaking again. “Hey,” he started, his scarred face filling the android’s vision. “Bring me a coffee, dipshit.”

Connor blinked, cocking his head a fraction of an inch to the left in what might’ve been- what, confusion? Surprise? Gavin already caffeine on his breath, and Connor wasn’t meant to-

“ _Get a move on!”_

Reed's abrupt explosion made Connor pause, his LED spinning yellow. 

Gavin Reed did not seem to be a very patient man. Very few people were nowadays, as the rise of technology had also led to the rise of instant gratification. And while Connor had not taken offense with Reed’s words, he couldn’t have members of the DPD using him for errands or asking trivial favors of him. If law enforcement refused to take him seriously he’d lose what little foothold CyberLife had in the precinct and that could _not_ happen.

Also, Connor didn’t appreciate being yelled at.

“I'm sorry, but I only take orders from Lieutenant Anderson.” 

“ _Oh,”_ Reed replied with raising brows, taking a step back and nodding derisively. “Oh, _”_ he repeated, sucking his lower lip into his mouth and nodding once, twice, three times, before turning back to the girl, who’d finally lifted her head to watch the scene unfold, and Connor followed his gaze, meeting her gaze for just a fraction of a moment before-

The punch was so abrupt Connor didn't even have the time to put up his hands to defend himself.

He held himself up for half a moment, swaying and gingerly touching his stomach before he crumpled, letting out a quiet, entirely involuntary groaning sound and squeezing his eyes shut. His fist hit the ground in an attempt to steady himself with enough force that, if he’d been human, his knuckles would’ve split, and although Reed was talking he sounded far away, underwater, full of static as Connor blinked wildly at the linoleum tiles below him.

“If Hank hadn’t gotten in the way yesterday, I would’ve fucked you up for disobeying a human.”

“ _Reed.”_

“Oh, c’mon. 'S not like the prick feels anything. _”_

“It's Cyberlife property, dumbass. You're gonna get fined."

“I barely touched it. It's fine. You're fine, right, bud?"

Connor did not respond. All the wind had been knocked out of him and his head was spinning with and absolutely none of what had just happened was good, but he couldn’t pinpoint exactly when things had gone wrong. He should’ve just given him the coffee as he’d asked. Also, he was beginning to realize that everyone at the DPD (with perhaps the exception of P.O Chris, who’d been relatively civil with him) was a difficult person and that the new week or two were not going to be easy for him.

“See? Doesn’t feel a thing.”

“You’re being a dick,” she said back. 

Reed ignored her, crouching down until he was eye level with Connor, who refused to acknowledge him. "Stay out of my way,” he said quietly, just loud enough for the girl to be able to hear. “‘Cause next time you won’t get off so easily.”

He paused, staring at Connor before he scoffed, flicked Connor’s spinning yellow LED and then let out a grunt as he got onto his feet and stalked out of the room, jerking his head for the girl to follow. 

“Reed, _”_ she said once more, sounding mildly irritated. But Connor couldn’t be sure. His attention was fixed firmly on the floor because while he’d already completed a scan of his system and everything seemed to be in order, there was a lingering sensation in the back of his head that something was not entirely right with him.

After a moment the detective let out a breath of exasperation, all misgivings with Gavin Reed already fading into memory as she slipped off her stool, grabbed her cup of lukewarm coffee, and followed after him.

Or she started to, anyway. 

She only got a few steps before she slowed to a stop, indecision rooting her beat-up shoes to a spot at the edge of Connor’s watery vision. She’d worn a hole through the inside of her shoe and he could see a small sliver of her white cotton sock as she shifted her weight back and forth until she finally extended a hand towards him.

Connor stared at her outstretched palm for a few moments. Tension filled every individual, delicate tendon, but she was making an effort to be friendly and so despite the fact that Connor could’ve very easily gotten up by himself, he took her hand and let her hoist him to his feet. She let go as soon as he was up, jamming the hand that had touched his into her pocket and using the other to lead her coffee cup to her mouth. Connor was still having trouble getting his voice into proper working order and took the few moments she was drinking to give her a once over.

He was taller than her but not by much. If she stood up straight she would be nearly as tall as Gavin Reed, except that she occupied her space with a decidedly different disposition. Reed was intrusive _,_ surly in a very loud sort of way, no soft edges, always on the lookout for different ways to poke the beast. She seemed intentionally understated, lacking any particular sprightliness one would expect a girl in her mid-twenties to have, and seemed, frankly, like she was on the verge of passing out at any given moment. She had bruised, dark circles lining her lower lashes, emphasized by the slight smear of old mascara, evidence of an unhealthy sleep schedule and chronic fatigue. Her skin was vaguely sallow and her nose and cheeks were red, like she’d recently been out in the cold and then there was some other sort of quality about her that Connor didn’t have the words to describe but made him feel mildly uncomfortable. 

This was not even a little bit good, because Connor was not supposed to be able to be fazed by people, especially ones as non-threatening as the girl in front of him. But no matter how he tried to dismiss it, he couldn’t rid himself of the small, soft unease in the back of his head. He’d attribute it to getting punched, because that made sense, because there was no other reason he’d be more intimidated by the wreck of a detective refusing to meet his gaze than an overtly violent man who’d threatened to shoot him over nothing. 

"... sorry,” she said after pulling her cup away from her face, and that was interesting, because Connor had never been apologized to before. “He’s just in a mood.”

Connor shook himself, trying to ignore the lingering, unfamiliar sensation gnawing at the back of his head and doing a quick scan to try to find the problem. Everything seemed to be in working order. Which meant he was fine but did not explain why he had the sneaking suspicion that he wasn’t.

"I'm okay, Detective. Thank you," he said, readjusting his tie and giving her a small, tactful smile she did not return, perhaps sensing his insincerity. Not that he _wasn't_ thankful, but, well. He wasn't, because Connor was, quite literally, incapable of _any_ emotion _._ She still refused to meet his gaze, her eyes aggressively evasive as she worried her lip between her teeth, looking almost like she wanted to say something.

Connor glanced down at her mouth. She was biting her lip hard enough it was a wonder she didn’t draw blood. Why was she so nervous?

“ _Hey, asshat,_ ” Reed called from across the precinct, and Connor turned, wondering what else the man wanted from him, except that Reed wasn’t looking at Connor.

At the sound of Gavin’s voice, she visibly relaxed, which was interesting, because Connor had not found anything about Gavin Reed relaxing or comforting.

“Yeah, I’m coming,” the girl replied and quickly grabbed Gavin’s cup of coffee from the table, leaving the breakroom and determinedly not looking back.

Connor turned his head after her, watching her retreat to Gavin’s desk and propping herself up onto his table, handing him his cup of coffee. Reed had both his feet kicked up next to her and was making a face at her as he mouthed something like _what the hell_ and Connor looked away, LED flashing yellow for half a moment before turning blue again as he cleared the event from his head, doing one last system check to make sure everything was in working order. If he found out what Reed had knocked loose he’d make a note to fine him, not out of spite, but rather so that he wouldn’t end up being the police department’s punching bag.

The holding cell was just behind him so he started towards it, thinking of nothing but his mission. 

The HK400 was still covered in month old blood and was staring at nothing when Connor approached. It didn’t look up until Connor was standing directly in front of it, and when it met his gaze he was reminded, quite suddenly, of an animal exhibit in a zoo. 

Connor said nothing for a long while. He could see a whisp of his own reflection in the glass and it was distracting, because while he held a neutral expression, there was a hint of something like pity in his eyes and the deviant seemed to recognize it. 

It spoke first. Softly. Just above a whisper.

“They’re going to destroy me.”

It was probably right. Connor didn’t know the details of what happened to deviants once they were in the hands of Cyberlife, but he knew that they’d be examined to see what had gone wrong. Perhaps taken apart. In every case, they’d be deactivated, because there was no reason to keep a defective android with malware in it. 

But it looked scared. Deviants sometimes replicated something similar to fear when faced with stressful situations. It was sad, in a way. Fear was so needless. Irrational. 

Connor had been destroyed before. His previous model had sacrificed itself on the Phillip’s rooftop and it hadn’t been scared. At least, that’s what Connor had taken from its memories when Cyberlife had uploaded them to him. He’d seen its grave in the garden with Amanda, a reminder of his failures. A reminder that this time, he had to do better.

“... you’re just a machine,” he replied after a long moment, gently, _kindly._ “It doesn’t matter.”

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


Hank was not at his desk anymore. 

Connor stopped, furrowing his brows and scanning the office for the Lieutenant. It was noon so he could’ve conceivably gone to get lunch, but he’d also only shown up to work twenty minutes ago and Connor would truly be impressed if he’d already taken a break. He quickly scanned the building and found Hank over by a desk he recognized as Detective Reed’s. 

He quickly went to join him, stopping short when he realized that Reed was not at his desk. Instead, the girl was sitting in his chair, staring up at Hank with her fingers still on the keyboard. They were mid-conversation and neither of them had noticed that an android had just self-destructed not two rooms away from them. 

Connor didn’t know what had set it off. It had appeared to be terrified of dying and yet it’d killed itself. He’d _watched_ it kill itself, unable to stop it or to keep himself from staring at the splatter of thirum running down the glass wall of the cell.

And it was unfortunate it had died. 

Connor hadn’t wanted it to. 

Connor stopped a few feet away from the desk, not wanting to interrupt. Neither of them had noticed him yet and he clasped his hands together behind his back, waiting patiently for them to finish.

“...no idea he was going to dump it on you,” the detective was saying, sounding relatively sincere. She didn’t seem to have trouble meeting Hank’s gaze, Connor noticed. He wasn’t sure if that was important or not.

“Yeah, well. Who the fuck else?”

“I don’t know, somebody who doesn’t hate androids. I mean, that’s a conflict of interest just there.”

“Exactly,” Hank said, hands planted on the desk. “So you need to run up there and tell him that you want it back.”

She pushed her chair back away from him and inch and shrunk her shoulders down a little, perhaps to make herself seem less aggressive. Conflict avoidant. “… I’m sorry, Hank, but I- this case is just too-”

"No, you know what, kid? You're a detective now, you have to do your job. Just 'cause you get shot once doesn't mean you get to sit on your ass for the next year and fuck around with Reed."

She flushed in indignation. "I'm not _fucking around_ with him,” she stated firmly, slow enough to really drive the point home. “We're working together.”

“Oh yeah?”  
“ _Yeah._ And I don’t appreciate gossip.”

Hank huffed out a laugh of disbelief, shaking his head at her. "C’mon, kiddo. I thought you liked working with androids. Why the change of heart, huh?"

“There’s no change of heart.”

“Then why’d you ask to be taken off?”

Why indeed. It was obvious Hank had found a sore point. Her expression, which had been fairly neutral up to this moment, darkened. 

“...conflict of interest,” she replied quietly.

“You one of those android sympathizers now or somethin’?”

“I’m-”

But then she caught sight of Connor and her words died in her throat, having realized the android was eavesdropping. Hank glanced behind him, seeing Connor and sucking in a harsh breath in between his teeth. “Jesus Christ. What the hell is it, huh?”

Connor straighted, flicking his attention to the girl, who had shoved her hands into her pockets and was looking at the monitor on the desk. And there was that _feeling_ again, that strange, unplaceable sensation something about her was off. 

“My apologies for interrupting, Lieutenant,” he said nicely, looking back to Anderson. “But we should really be getting to work.”

“Hey. Why don’t you get off my dick for one second, yeah?”

Connor persisted. “I was wondering if you could send me over the case files. I’d like to review them.”

“You aren’t touching my desk.”

“You can use my monitor,” the girl said, still not looking up from her computer. “My desk is over there.” She pointed to the desk opposite Hank’s. “Files should still be on it.”

“Thank you, detective.” Connor nodded and headed to her desk and not pointedly not listening to her and the Lieutenant continuing their conversation. It would be best not to involve himself in his partner’s personal issues, he reasoned as he sat down, surveying the immaculate table before him. 

He turned on the monitor just as Hank returned, because Reed was heading back from the bathroom and it didn’t seem like Anderson was particularly keen on interacting with him. He fell into his chair heavily, seeming slightly less angry then he’d been before. Now more than anything he seemed surly, sulking nastily as he clicked away at his computer. The detective must not have agreed to take the case back. Conor wasn’t sure how he felt about that, because while Anderson was a difficult person, something about the girl didn’t sit right with him.

Connor sat with perfect posture, gazing over the desk at his partner.

“ I get the impression my presence causes you some inconvenience, lieutenant,” he said after a moment. Profesional. Not aggressive, not too prying. “I’d like you to know I'm very sorry about that.”

Hank said nothing. Connor tried again.

“Now that we’re partners it would be great to get to know each other,” he suggested almost hopefully. When Hank continued to ignore him his smile faltered.

“...In any case, I'd like you to know I'm very happy to be working together. I'm sure we'll make a great team.” Actually, Connor _wasn’t_ sure about that, but there was nothing in his programming that prevented him from lying. He certainly hoped they’d make a good team, but it seemed more than likely that they wouldn’t.

Hank, yet again, stayed silent. Connor tried a different tactic.

“You have a dog, right?” A greying St. Bernard. A big dog for a big man.

Hank scowled. “How do you know that?” 

“The dog hairs on your chair,” he explained brightly. “I like dogs. What’s your dog's name?

“What's it to you?” 

Connor could not find a good answer. He hadn’t had much of an opportunity to practice his small talk and Hank didn’t seem interested in indulging him.

“Sumo,” the Lieutenant said after a long moment, and Connor looked up, mildly surprised he’d answered. “I call him Sumo.” And Hank was making this face at his screen, almost like a grimace. Maybe a smile. 

Which meant Connor was getting somewhere. “Do you listen to knights of the black death? I like that music. It’s... full of energy.” 

“You listen to heavy metal?”

“...Well, I don't really listen to music as such, but I'd like to.” That is, he would if he’d been capable of liking things. It still counted.

“Do you dislike the detective?”  
“The kid?”

“You seemed upset with her.”

“She’s fine.”

“Do you know how long she’s been working on android related cases?”  
“Case information is on the terminal,” Hank said shortly, and that was the end of that, so Connor began working.

The case information, however, did not shine any particular insight into the detective’s history. The only sign she’d been involved at all was the fact that she was listed as the presiding officer for most of the cases. She’d solved an impressive amount of them. Assaults, thievery, property damage. Quite a few cases. A lot of cases.

“243 files,” Connor said, almost surprised. Cyberlife hadn’t been privy to much of this information. “The first case dates back nine months ago. It all started in Detroit and quickly spread across the country.” _Like a disease._ “An AK400 is reported to have killed a man last night. That could be a good starting point for our investigation.”

Anderson said nothing. Connor stood, making his way to the side of his desk. 

“Ugh, _jesus,”_ Hank said at the sight of the approaching android, turning away.

“I know you didn’t ask for this investigation, lieutenant. But I'm sure you’re a professional.”

“Why don’t you go fuck yourself?” Hank suggested in turn. 

  * _Determined_


  * _Resign the mission_


  * _Threaten_



> _Determined._ “I’ve been assigned this mission, lieutenant. I didn't come here to wait until you feel like working.”

While Connor believed he’d made a valid point, he considered the idea that maybe he should’ve dropped it, because Hank had decided to shove him against the wall. So that was the second time he’d been attacked by a DPD officer in two hours. 

“Listen, asshole,” Hank gritted. He smelled like coffee and booze and fried sugar. “If it was up to me I’d throw the lot of you in a dumpster and set fire to it. So stop pissing me off _or things are gonna get nasty.”_

“Hank,” someone said, and after one last glower, Anderson dropped Connor, turning to face the detective. “You can’t just assault people.”

“It’s not a fucking person.”

“Just calm down, okay? You’re not doing anything to it by yelling. Look, I got some information on the android who killed Todd Williams last night. Apparently she was seen with a kid in the Ravendale district.”

Hank’s brow twitched. 

“I’m on it,” he finally muttered, pushing past her.

The girl stepped to the side and let him go, momentarily meeting Connor’s gaze, and _there it was again._

That feeling. 

“... better catch up,” she said, and Connor nodded, adjusting his jacket and following after the Lieutenant and leaving her at her desk. Connor got all the way out of the DPD and was halfway to his car when he was hit full force by the inexplicable, nauseating realization that the thing he hadn’t been able to place about the detective was recognition.

Which was strange, because he’d never seen her before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Otherwise known as the chapter in which Connor gets assaulted twice, witnesses a suicide, and makes friends.
> 
> I've played the "waiting for hank" chapter at least forty four times while writing this chapter and i haven't gotten sick of it yet. god i love Gavin reed. he's literally terrible in every way imaginable. anyways thank you for reading and commenting! Feedback really gives me inspiration. 
> 
> Should I have longer time skips in between chapters or would you like to see more scenes from the actual game? Let me know. Hopefully chapter 3 will be up early next week!
> 
> A Bientot!


	3. ALEXITHYMIA

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Connor, past and present, struggles with understanding himself and the enigma that is the unimpressive, unimposing 20-something-year-old detective, Reed is an asshole, and a lot of things happen in various bathrooms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Be mindful of the time stamps proceeding certain sections. Some events in this fic take place in 2035 and some in 2038. Flashbacks are not prefaced by time stamps but are usually in italics. Hopefully, it's clear when each event/flashback is happening.

**ALEXITHYMIA**

_ (n)  _

  * _The inability to identify and describe emotions experienced by one's self or others._



  
  


* * *

**DECEMBER 17TH, 2035**

**PM 11:49**

  
  
  


His hands are hard, all harsh angles and jutting joints and clean lines, like somebody slipped a latex glove over a swollen skeleton. He's not bony, per se, but the delicate synthetic tendons in his hand are stiff and unyielding like they've been cast out of cement. Almost human. Like a hyper-realistic painting or sculpture or some other interpretative imitation of humanity. He's a machine; he's just screws and bolts and wires and a bunch of other complicated, unfathomably expensive technology and while his hands may  _ look  _ authentic, it only took a touch to tell something about them is not quite right. He has no fat to cushion the blow of his hands and no warmth to soften the sting. Nothing about his hands are forgiving or nice or genuine and he's particularly aware of this little fact because he's got his hands on  _ her  _ and she's exactly the opposite.

She's soft. 

A little bit softer than he'd imagined she'd be. Not that he spends any significant amount of time imagining how soft she is. He only means it catches him off guard. Connor guesses that she hadn't been exercising as much since she'd left the academy and she'd begun to fill out her frame just a little, just enough for his fingers to dig into the slight squish of her body, choking at the feeling of her skin against his palms.

Her overpriced apartment is tiny and shitty and its bathroom is no exception. He's not even sure he can legally call it a  _ bathroom.  _ It breaks at least two building codes. But again, it's a 90-year-old shitty apartment in Detroit. He's not exactly shocked. She’s a low-ranking, 24-year-old, family-less police officer. She isn’t rolling in money. Connor’s uniform was probably more than a week’s wage for her. Though in the state his suit is currently in, he isn’t sure. The bathroom tiles are off-white squares packed uncomfortably close together, glistening with both shower and lake water. A fuzzy bath mat is wedged in the space between the shower, the toilet, and the door. It's waterlogged from the shower sprat that escaped when Connor had pulled back the shower curtain.

The shower itself is only a little bigger than a linen closet; it's barely big enough to fit a single person, let alone two people. Or, he supposes, one half-naked person and one fully clothed, shaking, soaking wet android.

The shower water is hot. At least the storm hasn’t knocked out her electricity. Which is such a frankly stupid thing to worry about when, not three hours ago, she’d almost died of hypothermia. When she’d fallen into the harbor and Connor had to dive in after her and drag her waterlogged, limply struggling body out of the lake onto the snow and try to breathe life back into her (which is so silly, because Connor doesn’t have a life to give to her) and she’d looked like a  _ corpse- _

And he doesn't want to think about it.

The water is hot. It’s hot and it beats down on his shoulders and neck as his head bows in shame and reverence, hair dripping in his eyes.. His suit, once pristine and spotlessly clean, has been thoroughly ruined by the harsh, black, freezing brine of the Detroit harbor, but it's become suddenly so insignificant to him. If he'd planned this out properly, perhaps he would've discarded his jacket and shoes before stepping into the shower, but it's fairly obvious this- whatever  _ this  _ is- had not been planned, and he's really not sure what he's doing at all, or why he's doing it. But he doesn't know what's real anymore and he doesn't know why he's shaking or why he feels so empty and he really knows nothing at all, he thinks.

His hands settle naturally at her waist and he sucks in a shuddering breath through his teeth, fingers digging to the quietly feminine dip of her figure. His eyes squeeze shut as he presses his face into that little juncture where her shoulder meets her neck. He can feel her pulse under his mouth, desperately, unequivocally human, and he's trembling. Actually, physically shaking as his grip bites into her skin so hard it's quite likely there will be bruises there in the morning.

And it's-

And he thinks he should be going into sensory overload. He thinks there should be a conglomerate of warning signs at the edges of his vision warning him he was committing a serious offense against his better nature. Sirens should be screeching, red-hot, in his ears, notifying him of his betrayal, but he heard nothing except her heartbeat against his cheek, fabric shifting against skin and hard, shuddering inhales. It's quiet. There are no warning signs. There is nothing to distract him, every single strand of his attention focused on her, and the places where her skin touched his, and the feeling of his under his hands, and he thinks he might just die a little. 

And Connor knows he can't die, and that it's just skin, and he's not a sentimental man- or machine, he means- but he wants-

He wants-

He  _ wants. _

Her hair is wet and he hides his face in it and wills himself to stop trembling. His eyes are open now, gaze cast downwards towards her bare legs and her slightly see-through shirt and the black bra under it. He knows she'd gotten into the shower fully clothed. He didn't blame her. The warm shower had been too great a temptation to stave off even just for the few moments it would’ve taken to undress. He thinks she must've begun to strip down while he was standing in the hall. He'd seen her jacket and jeans flung on the floor outside the shower door in a puddle of cooling shower water on the way in but he hadn't really noticed the fact she was half-dressed until this moment. It changed nothing. Except that she looked  _ smaller  _ without her jacket and a shudder wracked through his body, some biblical, blasphemous feeling like guilt or humiliation or grief or maybe just defeat. 

"Connor," she whispers again. The first time she'd said his name it had been in disbelief, like  _ holy shit what the fuck are you doing in my bathroom.  _ The second time it had been a warning, a  _ you should probably take a walk, you're not yourself.  _ This time it's just uncertain, quiet, so soft it's barely audible over the gentle pitter-patter-spray of water against tile and fabric and skin. 

He does not respond. 

He wishes she wouldn't speak. It makes this harder, somehow. Maybe because he feels like he has to answer and he doesn't know what to say. Because, thinking on it further, there  _ is  _ nothing to say. He doesn’t know what he’s doing and he can’t even verbalize this because the last time he’d tried to say something he’d found his voice just missing. All choked-up like she’s got a hand around his throat and she’s trying to throttle the sense out of him. But her hands are not around his neck. They’re hovering over his upper back and she’s still stiff, uncomfortable, probably feeling violated and confused as she rightfully should be, because Connor just climbed into the shower with her and hasn't explained why or done anything but hide his face from view like maybe that'll protect him from divine judgement. She's going to push him away. He hopes she does. He hopes she shoves him over and he hits his head and whatever has _broken_ inside of him will be put back together. 

But, as usual, she does not cave to his wishes.

Her hands settle on the slope of his hunched shoulders, gentle, soft, human, _understanding._

And _fuck,_ he thinks.

They just sort of stay there for a while. He feels her chest rising and falling as she tilts her head a fraction of an inch so her cheek rests against the top of Connor's head. Then her hands slip, slow, across the planes of his back until she's got one hand on the back of his neck and the other on his forearm. Her thumb rubs idle, steady, at the vertebrae at the junction where his neck and spine meet, and then she's tugging his head away from her shoulder until she can face him properly.

He doesn't look at her. He can't. He can feel her staring at him, wet, dark lashes lidding eyes that burn and brand. 

They're too close. He can feel her breath, even through the steam of the shower. And this is unprofessional. This is crossing a line. He has crossed the line, the line he'd long since marked in stone that separates him from becoming something he is not and that separates him from mortality and fallibility and separates him from  _ her. _

There is very little space between them. The water falling down her shoulders gets wedged between them, affixing them together until he can't  _ move,  _ can't remove the parasitic influence eating at the inside of his chest, can't stop shaking. 

He slowly, slowly lifts his head until he meets her gaze.

And he knows very little- he's established exactly how little he knows, but he is wholly, fully aware of the fact he's-

He's  _ fucked. _

  
  
  
  
  


* * *

  
  


**NOV 6TH, 2038**

**AM 11:37**

  
  


Connor sprinted down the soggy streets at inhuman speed, kicking up grimy rainwater behind him. Sounds of sirens wailed as he flew by inquisitive civilians, mind blank, free of distractions- free of  _ her  _ for the first time since he’d left the station- save for one single, pounding thought:  _ Don’t let it escape.  _

“They went that way,” a dark-skinned officer called out to him, waving one arm and pointing the other down a long alley to his right. Connor didn’t stop to thank him, pushing past and whirling down the muddy, damp alley, where a petite woman- an android, a  _ deviant-  _ with stark white bangs and a beanie was helping a small child up a chain-link fence. 

_ 30 m away _

_ 21 m away _

_ 7 m away _

Connor had been engineered to be the fastest android in existence, capable of outrunning both man and machine, but they’d had too much of a head start. The deviant was already halfway over and upon seeing Connor approaching, dropped down the last three or four feet, quickly prying the child off the wall after her just as Connor hit the fence.

He was less than a yard away, so  _ close,  _ his hands grasping the wires of the fence dividing them as the AX400 dragged the little girl behind her and met Connor’s gaze for a fragment of a moment, her eyes pale blue and  _ desperate,  _ searching and yet determined, and Connor stared back, his brow knitting because there was something very familiar about that look. Something-

_ Teeth grit jaw set nose red mascara and sweat and blood and rain running down flushed cheeks, trembling hands, a pistol pointed at his head, a shaky command, a plea, an order, a bond severed, betrayed- _

Her attention snapped away from him and caught onto something to Connor’s left. He turned to see the officer from earlier, panting and raising his pistol to the deviant.

Connor threw up an arm in front of him, hand splayed in a warning. “ _ Don’t shoot! _ We need it alive!”

But Connor did not wait to see if the officer had lowered his gun or not, because the AX400 had fled, grabbing the little girl’s hand and skidding down the steep, wet dirt slope that led to the highway. Neither the deviant nor the child paid any heed to the bold danger sign blocking their way, climbing over it and onto the road just as Hank staggered over, clutching his side with one hand and the other propping himself over his knees.

“Oh, fuck,” the Lieutenant wheezed, glancing up through his shaggy grey hair at the android attempting to cross the highway.  _ Crossing the highway.  _ “That’s insane.”

Connor had to agree, although he wasn’t sure what was more astounding: the fact that they’d decided to cross a high-speed freeway or that they had not yet been hit. The deviant dodged and sidestepped and hurtled across four lines of traffic without so much as a scratch, and had Connor believed in a higher power he would’ve had to consider the possibility that he was witnessing a divine intervention. Which was not good news for him, because it was beginning to seem like they just might escape and Connor could not stress just how much that  _ could not happen. _

Connor started to climb the fence but Hank grabbed the back of his jacket and yanked him back down. “ _ Hey.  _ Where you goin’?”

Connor tried to shake Hank off but the man had a firm grip on his shoulder, keeping him rooted to the spot. “I can’t let them get away,” he said through gritted teeth, watching as the AX400 dodged a van.

“They  _ won’t,”  _ Anderson assured, letting his hand drop. “They’ll never make it to the other side.”

“I can’t take that chance.” He started up again.

“HEY,” Hank grabbed Connor and dragged him back down. “You will get yourself killed. Do not go after them, Connor, that’s an  _ order.” _

  * _Stay_


  * Chase them  
  




It didn't matter if he was destroyed. Dying was temporary for Connor. He'd died before. He'd-

  
  


_ A feeling of weightlessness. Like flying. The deviant's body, flailing, tangled up in his own. They're not flying. They're plummeting. It's an unmistakable sensation. He hears, far away, through the sound of wind and choppers, a little girl screaming. Another voice, too. A familiar one. Something that sounds like his name. _

_ The ground is getting closer, arms outstretched, ready to catch him with all the tender softness of a sledgehammer.  _

_ He closes his eyes and - _

  
  


Connor let go of the fence like he’d been burned and Hank let go of him, letting out a harsh exhale and nodding once, small, before turning to watch the android escape.

Connor swallowed thickly, ignoring the small notification in his peripherals that his software instability had just increased. He could barely process what had just happened. Some sort of flashback. It had been so brief, but so vivid. The Phillip's rooftop. The RK800 assigned to that case had been destroyed. From what Connor could tell, he'd just had a glimpse into its final moments. 

His vision was spotty and he was having trouble breathing, his inhales sputtery and jagged and not even a little bit like it was supposed to be. Which was strange, as Connor did not need to breathe. Hank did not seem to notice Connor's unsteadiness, preoccupied with something happening at the other side of the highway. The android forced his breath to even out, placing one hand back on the fence and curling his fingers through the chain links to steady himself as his sight cleared up to reveal that the girls had, against all odds, made it across. 

The AX400 was not looking at Connor or Hank. Instead, it fell to its knees, gingerly holding the child’s shoulders with all the delicate tenderness of a mother, as though it felt-

Like it felt nothing, because androids couldn’t, by their very nature, feel things, Connor reminded himself.

He watched the android wrap its arms around the little girl so tightly it must’ve hurt, trembling as it pressed a kiss to the top of the child’s head.

  
  


Couldn't feel anything at all.

  
  


……………………………………………….

  
  


"Connor, can you get out of my fucking car, please?"

Connor roused himself back to reality, blinking twice as he turned his head to the window, where Hank was waiting, squinting with keys in hand, for Connor to get out of the vehicle. 

He unbuckled and stepped out of the car. "Sorry, Lieutenant." 

Hank, eyes still narrowed, made an unintelligible response that mostly consisted of grunts and " _ fuckin' android"'s _ and other mildly embittered comments about the efficiency of Cyberlife merchandise. Turning, the man stalked back off towards the station, Connor trailing a little behind.

"Is there a specific reason we've returned to the precinct?" Connor called after Hank, who seemed intent on putting as much space between him and the android as possible.

"Left my wallet," Hank replied shortly, ripping open the door and sulking inside. Connor caught it just before it closed and slipped in behind him into the bustling lobby of the station. A wave of toasty air hit his face, sucking the chill from his neat suit as Connor carefully sidestepped a rather large woman, trying to keep up with the Lieutenant, who was moving surprisingly quickly for a middle-aged man.

"Is there a specific reason you need your wallet to catch the AX400?" Connor continued, not intentionally snarky. 

"It's lunchtime, asshole. I'm going to get lunch." Hank flashed his badge at the security gate and it opened automatically, slamming behind him just as Connor approached. Connor, who had been granted a semi-permanent security pass, swiped his hand over the scanner and the doors swung open for him. Hank seemed mildly disappointed in Connor's tenacity, hurrying to his desk in hopes of evading conversation. 

Connor, as expected, followed, weaving through the dividers and desks and officers milling about. It was decidedly busier than it had been earlier that morning, with considerably more officers commuting across the floor, darting between desks and evidence rooms and offices. In the mild chaos he noticed, somewhat distantly, the Detective was not at her desk. He was unsure if he was relieved or disappointed by the fact and less sure why he would be feeling either way in the first place.

He tore his gaze away from her tidy station, making note of the full cup of cold coffee on her desk. She must've left in a hurry. Connor clasped his hands behind his back in front of Hank, having finally caught up with the man, who was ripping drawers open impatiently at his notably less organized station. "Don't you think we should follow after the deviants?"

"I put out an APB. I've got guys patrolling the area. They can't have gotten far. So I'm going to get lunch." Hank sounded impatient and slightly annoyed. "You care so much, you can follow them yourself."

Connor, on the other hand, had an overflowing, bottomless well of patience, and gave the Lieutenant a pleasant but firm smile. "I've been told to stay with you, Lieutenant. We're partners. Like it or not. So-"

"Jesus fucking christ, do you ever fucking shut up?" Hank sighed, closing the drawer. He'd found his wallet, and after a quick inspection of its contents, grunted and pocketed it. "I need to piss. You gonna babysit me while I'm pissing, too?"

"Lieutenant," Connor began, somewhat stern. Hank waved him off and started off down the hall towards the semi-private corner where the non-public restrooms were located. Connor, again, was hot on his heels. "Lieutenant, you understand that the longer we wait, the more likely the androids are to get away, correct?" 

Hank ignored him. Connor rose his voice loud enough it might've drawn a few looks had the station not been quite so busy. "I really must insist we limit the number of breaks we take. This case is of utmost priority to Cyberlife and I have been personally tasked with-"

The women's bathroom door forcefully flung open directly into Connor's face. 

He caught it just before it smashed into his nose bridge, his reflexes the only things saving his face from becoming a flattened, thirum-dripping mess. 

"Oh, shit, sorry," a voice blurted from the other side of the door, obscured by the barrier between them. 

"It's alright," Connor said evenly, blinking once and already over his surprise. He let go of the door, settling back into his professionally friendly persona. "No harm done. I'm…"

And as the door fell away from between them he trailed off, face to face with the flushed, slightly disheveled Detective, who staring at him, lips slightly parted, frozen mid-apology.

Connor, quite suddenly, forgot what he’d been saying.

( _Which was bad, bad,_ _ bad,  because people didn't catch Connor off-guard. Much less non-threatening, clumsily put-together girls in too-big jackets who looked like they'd volunteer to get run over by a train, but Connor was too preoccupied to be concerned with any of that at the moment, because she had, as previously established, caught him off-guard.) _

"Hello, Detective," he said evenly, mouth terrifyingly, inexplicably dry. 

"Fuck me," she replied in turn, which was, to say the least, not the response Connor had expected. 

He stood there, a little at a loss, before she hid her face in the palm of one hand, sucking in a stifled, shuddery breath that left her body in a humorless laugh. "What the  _ fuck." _

He’d seen her only a few hours ago and thought she’d been in rough shape then. Somehow, impossibly, she looked worse. Connor continued to stand, not knowing how to proceed, because as much as most of the police officers had cursed at him, there was usually contempt or aggression behind it. She had neither of these things in her voice. Instead, there was something like defeat, mixed in with a morbid, deranged amusement. Like she'd transcended bitterness and outrage and moved to something almost like appreciation for the ironic value of her situation. 

Connor was not sure what he’d done besides stand in her way to make her so upset, but all sorts of red-flags were being set off in his head that warned him now would not be a good time to worry about it.

"Sorry to get in your way," he said, hopefully nicely, because he genuinely did not know how else to respond. 

She dragged her hand off her face, eyes bloodshot and tired and mouth still pressed into a rueful, forced grimace that might’ve been an attempt at a smile. "It's all good," she said in a way that made Connor think it was all very much  _ not  _ good. "Sorry I hit you with the door."

"I’m fine, but thank you. It was just an accident."

"How do you know?" She said, which was, again, an incredibly off-putting response to what he’d very politely communicated. Maybe it was a poorly executed joke. Connor took that chance and gave her a smile, trying to ease the tension. 

“I supposed that was assumptious of me. And you know what they say about assuming.”

She said nothing. Connor realized, somewhat belatedly, his joke (something he’d heard before about  _ assuming making an ass out of “u” and “me”) _ was not going to land even a little bit. So he did not continue with his joke, which was an even worse idea than the joke had been in the first place because his voice had very clearly had the cadence of a joke set up and when it became very clear he was not going to say the punchline neither of them knew what to do.

They sunk into an uneasy, awkward silence. They were close- not intimately so, but closer than comfortable for people who had only met once- and his nose tingled at the proximity, that same thick, cold, feeling of familiarity crawling up his spine. Her gaze flickered up to his mouth for a fraction of a moment before she fixed her focus back to the serial number on his breast with an expression Connor lacked the ability to describe. At this angle, with her gaze averted, Connor could see the whites of her eyes were bloodshot. 

"Well, good talk," she croaked abruptly, before ducking past him and quickly fleeing down the hall, head still turned downwards. Connor watched her go, hands still knotted together behind him, something stodgy and disgustingly unavoidable caught at the back of his throat. Without entirely making the decision to, Connor took a step after her. He probably would've followed her all the way back to her desk had he not been shaken back to reality by the women's bathroom door opening again, this time revealing a decidedly different, but no less threatening detective. 

Gavin Reed quickly and quietly closed the door behind him, not having realized Connor was standing less than a yard away. He turned around, walking face-first into Connor's chest before jumping back, stumbling into the wall, face quickly reddening.

"Jesus fucking _ \- fuck _ ," Reed hissed, a rosy, healthy flush across his cheeks, which marked the second time in the past three minutes in which a detective had cussed at him promptly after leaving the women’s restroom. This  _ fuck,  _ however, was directed entirely at Connor with a hostility that was anything but subtle. "What the  _ fuck _ ?"

Connor looked at Reed, expression neutral, before shifting his gaze to the women's bathroom. Then back to Reed. Then down the hall to where the disheveled girl had fled. And then it clicked, b ecause Connor did not need to be a multi-million dollar prototype detective android to realize that something was not quite decent about the situation he had unwittingly stumbled into. 

"Hello, Detective Reed.”

"What the fuck are you doing creeping around for, huh?" Reed asked, his brows furrowed. "You some kind of freak or something?"

"Lieutenant Anderson is in the bathroom," Connor explained patiently, hands clasped behind his back. “I’m waiting for him.” A pause. "Can I ask what  _ you _ were doing in the woman's bathroom, Detective Reed?" He inquired, innocently enough it was impossible to tell if he was genuinely curious or if he was being incredibly passive-aggressive. 

Regardless of intent, Reed's ears went beet red. "You can mind your own business, is what you can do, pal," the man retorted, the scar on his face wrinkling as he scrunched his nose in what he might’ve thought was an intimidating manner but made him look mildly bunny-ish. 

"I'll be sure to keep that in mind," Connor responded pleasantly. 

"Yeah, you do that."

Yet another officer exited the bathrooms. Hank Anderson had apparently decided to join the meet-cute, closing the men's room door with the toe of his shoe as he patted his damp hands on his jeans and eyed the scene in front of him.

"There a problem?" He asked, wary, with an edge of authority that both Gavin and Connor did not miss. 

"Keep this thing on a leash," Reed responded, albeit with less heat than previously. "It’s a fucking creep.”

"Uh-huh," Anderson said, unimpressed, glancing between the man and the women's restroom with no small amount of suspicion. "And what're you up to?"

“I was going to go to the bathroom.”

“That’s the lady’s room."

" _ Obviously  _ I wasn't going into the- no  _ duh  _ it's the lady's room."

A long silence.

Hank opened the door to the men’s room after maybe six or seven seconds of dead space, gesturing with one hand for him to enter with a mocking raise of his eyebrows. "Don't let me stop you."

Gavin, shooting one last glare Connor's way, rolled his eyes and shoved past Anderson into the restroom. Anderson made a face of distaste. 

"Fuckin' hate that guy."

Connor said nothing. Hank, shaking his head, turned to Connor, who looked a little lost.

"You good?" He asked in a rare moment of what appeared to be genuine, if not begrudging, concern, giving Connor a once over. "You look like you just shit your pants."

“We should be going,” Connor replied instead, neutral. Hank rolled his eyes, apparently regretting his mistaking the lost look on Connor’s face for anything except fucking weird robot behavior, and stalked down the hall.

“ _ I'm  _ going to grab some lunch."

"You've only been at work for two hours."

"It's lunchtime. Wait here, I'll be back."

"Sorry, Lieutenant, but I can't leave you. If a lead comes in-"

The detective was at her station, looking resolutely at her screen. Which meant she was not looking at Connor. Or thinking about Connor, probably. 

"-I have to be there."

"Look. I just don't want to hear about it anymore, okay?"

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Reed approach the Detective's desk. He planted one hand on the table and the other on the back of her chair as he leaned in low and murmured something to her. 

"I said I'm fine," she replied curtly. Far from being dissuaded, Reed drew even closer, his shoulders blocking her off from view. Two nearby officers glanced over at them before turning back to their conversation, snickering. Connor quickly tore his gaze away, disquieted, and adjusted his cufflinks. 

He had tried to put the detective out of his mind. That little jolt of recognition he'd experienced earlier had quickly been written off by Connor as nothing more than a minor malfunction with his facial recognition software. He'd reviewed all his memory files and she had not once made an appearance, and his memory was very nearly infallible. There had also been bigger things to worry about, the first of which being, of course, the fretfully un-apprehended AX400 and the unidentified child it had kidnapped. Connor did not generally worry about things, and while he’d taken the loss in stride, it was entirely unacceptable he had let it get away. Personally and professionally, the results of the chase were more than disappointing. Amanda was certain to agree with him in that regard, so retrieving them was absolutely his primary priority in the upcoming days.  If the news that a Cyberlife android had kidnapped a child got out, Cyberlife would be displeased with him, to put it lightly. To further complicate things, he'd not gotten a clear look at the child's face and therefore was unable to discern the identity of the girl. He’d scanned the database of missing children reports submitted in the past few weeks, hoping to find the child in one of the files, but had not found any individuals that matched the description of the child witnesses had given. The deceased owner of the AX400, Todd Williams, did have a daughter, but a call to his ex-wife had assured Connor that his daughter was safe and sound and had not had contact with her father in a decade.

Which begged the question: who was the little girl?

Connor supposed it was a good thing no one was looking for the child. It brought less attention to the case, which already had far too much attention, in his very professional opinion. Hopefully, she was an orphan or runaway and they could quietly drop her into the system where no one would make a fuss over the kidnapping. If not, Cyberlife could politely suggest the story be kept quiet. Maybe financially compensate the family for their troubles. Cyberlife could be very persuasive when they needed to be. _Connor_ could be very persuasive when he needed to be. 

All this to say,  Connor was the most advanced android prototype in existence with a busy schedule and an even bigger weight on his shoulders. There were important things he needed to address and absolutely no reason for him to worry about inexplicably familiar, socially inept, twenty-something-year-old detectives who kept poor company and weren't capable of looking him in the eye. If they'd met before, surely she would've mentioned it. Surely-

It didn't matter, he reminded himself. He'd head to Cyberlife later to discuss the issue with his technicians. Surely they could fix whatever software that had defected. Surely.

"If it really bothers you so bad, you can sit in the car and wait while I'm out," Hank said, a little defeatist, and Connor tore his attention away from the two detectives with finality he wasn't sure was all that authentic.

Amanda had told him he needed to cooperate with the DPD. 

He could do that.

"Okay, Lieutenant."

"But I don't want any more lectures, understand?"

"I understand."

"Just sit there and keep your mouth shut."

"Of course."

"Say it."

"I'll sit there and keep my mouth shut."

* * *

  
  


Connor did not keep his mouth shut.

Which he did not consider disobeying orders, because Hank had never technically  _ ordered  _ him not to talk. If anything, it had been a strongly worded suggestion and there was nothing in Connor's programming that forced him to obey strongly worded suggestions. Besides, while he stayed mostly quiet on the ride to Hank's food truck of choice, it seemed that now that Hank had lunch in him he was slightly less grouchy. The conversation they'd had while he had been eating had not been an unpleasant one, either. Since they'd received the tip about the possible deviant sighting at the apartment complex, however, the subject had turned back to the case, and Connor refused to shut up about it.

“Perhaps it’s a manufacturing issue. But the androids afflicted have all come from different factories and as far as Cyberlife can tell, there’s no link between the android’s parts. That is to say, their bio-components have all been manufactured at different times and in different locations.”

“Uh-huh,” Hank said, not listening. 

“It’s more probable deviancy is a sort of virus, infecting specific androids via the web or cloud. All androids are connected to both the internet and Cyberlife’s own physical servers. If someone were to somehow get ahold of that connection, it’s possible they could abuse it to upload malware onto the android. Although internal investigations of captured deviants haven’t produced any evidence of-”

“Oh, you wanna cut me off, huh, bud?” Hank interrupted loudly, rolling down his window to flip off the truck that’d just cut him off, and Connor fell silent, realizing his musings were falling on deaf ears. 

They were about three or four miles away from the abandoned apartment building and Connor had come to the conclusion that Hank was an impatient driver. It was probably a good thing they'd taken Hank's personal car rather than a clearly marked police car because Hank's atrocious driving would've reflected poorly on the DPD. Not that Connor cared all that much about the public opinion of the Detroit police. They were nothing but a means to an end in achieving Cyberlife's goals, and he didn't mean that in a malicious way at all. It was just the fact of the matter. 

“Lieutenant,” Connor said as Hank made an illegal right-hand turn at a red light. 

“What?”  
“Do you have any thoughts on the subject?”  
“What subject?”  
“Deviancy in androids?”

“I don’t fucking know shit about tech stuff like that. Look, last week I was working on homicides. Yesterday I find out I’ve got to be the DPD’s bitch and take a case nobody else would touch with a ten-foot pole. Today I’m driving to bumfuck to investigate a  _ noise  _ some paranoid junkie heard while they were tripping out on the off chance we might find some asshole rogue robot.”

“I understand you’re frustrated with your assignment,” Connor replied calmly, but sternly. “However, that’s no excuse not to be fully invested in the case.”

“You’re  _ invested  _ enough for the both of us, pal.”

“Have you reviewed the previous case reports yet?” Connor continued, still calm, but with an edge of something a little like exasperation. “They contain almost all the prerequisite information needed for our assignment. The previous presiding detective did a very thorough job documenting the cases.”

“Course I looked through them. I even helped the kid out on a few a while back.”

That was news to Connor. “Really?”  
“Yeah. She was having some trouble with this android, something like eight or nine months ago, and she asked if I’d- what, you don’t believe me?”  
“You weren’t listed on the report.”

“It wasn’t anything official or whatever. She just asked my opinion.”

Connor tilted his head at Hank. “Are you friends with the detective?” 

"The kid?" He snorted, which was strange because Connor didn’t think anything that had been said in the conversation was funny or laughable. "She's, what, twenty?"

"Twenty-six," Connor corrected a little too quickly. Hank squinted at him out of the corner of his eye.

"...Whatever. She's fine."

"Fine," Connor repeated, neutral.

" _ Yeah,  _ fine," he huffed before looking back at the slightly sludgy road almost thoughtfully. “She’s fine. Wasn’t so sure when she first got the job, ‘cause she’s- I mean, she’s a  _ kid,  _ y’know? And I know guys who’ve been wanting to get at being a detective for a decade, and then this random-ass teenage girl gets promoted two years into her run and the whole thing reeks like a park urinal but- but she ain’t that bad. I mean, she didn’t get here ‘cause of  _ merit _ , obviously, but she holds her own at the station, I guess. Sorta minds her own business.” His usually guarded gaze softened slightly. "... she's a good kid." 

It had not been Connor’s business to worry about the reasons behind her or any other individual officer’s promotion, but upon reflection, it  _ was  _ rather suspect someone of her age, social status, and honestly unexceptional case record would be promoted to such a high position so early in her career. But again, that was none of his business. 

“So are you close to her, then?”  
“What’s it to you?”  
“I’m only curious.” A pause. “She used to be on the case. I suppose I’d like to know why she asked to be removed from it. I thought you might know if you were close with her.”

“She won’t tell me shit.” Hank’s mouth curled slightly, rueful, almost mocking. “I don’t know anyone else who’d drop a case if it meant having to partner up with Reed.”  
Connor was confused about that particular relationship himself. Reed seemed unpleasant and she seemed, from the brief interaction he’d had with her, annoyed with the man, and yet he’d run into them in the bathroom together and Connor reminded himself it didn’t matter even a little bit.

“She seems to get along well with him,” He said finally. A pause. “Are they friends?”

“Is that what they’re calling it these days?”

Another pause. Connor tried again, his voice entirely casual. “Are they dating?” Not that he cared. He was only making small talk. 

“Why would I know?"

“You’re their supervisor.”

“I’m not their daddy. It’s none of my business who they screw.”

“If it interferes with their job performance, it might be.”

“They aren’t dating,” Hank said shortly. Another little snort of amusement. “I don’t even think they’ve ever fucked.”

Connor realized, somewhat distantly, that the conversation had gone astray somewhere. He looked out the window silently instead of responding, wondering if this new tidbit of information was worth retaining. 

“He’s a decade older than her, at least,” Hank remarked suddenly, still staring at the road ahead. For someone who was supposedly not friends with the girl, the disapproving, protective edge in his voice was unwarranted. 

“Does she dislike androids?” Connor asked, just as abrupt, and Hank scrunched up his brow. 

“I don’t know. She grew up with them. Why?”

“She seems uncomfortable around me.”

“When’ve you been around her?”

“I’ve run into her two or three times. She seems uncomfortable with my presence.” She also seemed  _ incredibly  _ familiar, but that was neither here nor there and Hank could not help Connor with that particular issue. 

“Don’t think that’s an  _ android  _ thing. I think maybe you just freak her out. You’re a freaky guy.”

Connor did not know how to respond to that. Luckily, he did not have to, as they’d just arrived (safely, despite Hank's best attempts at murdering both of them in a car wreck) at the apartment building. 

“What the fuck?” Hank muttered suddenly, craning his neck out the window to see a cop car already parked at the scene, empty, with the officers presumably already in the building. “Why the fuck did they send us out here if they’ve already got guys checking it out?”

Connor did not know the answer. Hank didn’t seem to be looking for one. He let out a huff, jamming the door open and stepping out onto the street. Connor followed suit, closing the door behind him nicely just as Hank stalked into the decrepit, grimy building. 

Connor followed into the lobby. There was a shoddy little elevator, seemingly still in working condition, covered in graffiti. He pressed the  _ up  _ button with his big thumb and with a strenuous creak and concerning rumble of old mechanics, the elevator door gave a weak, half-hearted chime and opened for them. 

Hank muttered something under his breath, apparently struggling to remember what floor they'd been called to. Connor took pity on him and silently pressed the button before standing back as the elevator staggered upwards. From the age and weary moans of the elevator, it looked like the ride would take a while. Connor took the time to familiarize himself with his temporary home. It, like the rest of the building, was raunchy and gritty, the remains of an older Detroit Cyberlife had not been able to gentrify with their shockingly large, loving arms. It smelled like ancient metal and bleach. It's not a comforting scent. Someone graffitied a surprisingly detailed penis on the ceiling. Connor was almost impressed. The graffiti extended onto the left wall of the elevator. The words  _ fuck cops  _ were painted there. Below, written in sharpie, someone replied:  _ buy me dinner first.  _ Hank's eyes roamed the elevator about the same time Connor’s did and when they settled there he actually let out a little grunt of amusement. 

Connor personally did not understand the humor, but it was good to hear Hank in a slightly less pissy mood. It was a long way to the top floor and it was probably for the best if Hank was not enraged at him the entire time. The display above the buttons displays the floor numbers as they ascend and it seems they're almost halfway up. 

And then, so suddenly and so strongly it's like he'd hit by a subway train, he was somewhere else. In-

_ \- a sleek elevator. A coin, still cool to the touch, dancing across his knuckles. Balanced in between his hard, unyielding fingers. A human hand might've warmed it but while Connor might've been modeled after one, he's about as alive as the quarter he's fiddling with.  _

_ Small, pleasant little chimes chirp at him as he ascends to the penthouse. Very faintly he can hear the sound of helicopters outside, tense, stressed, waiting with bated breath for a resolution predicated on Connor's next few choices.  _

_ The report Cyberlife received stated three officers had already been killed by the deviant. Another life is at stake.  _

_ Connor is not nervous. There is an enormous load on his shoulders and if he makes a mistake death is almost guaranteed. But he is not nervous because he is physically incapable of it. He is filled with the determination of an outlaw being ushered to the gallows. Cold, steely acceptance. Not just resignation to his fate, but a willingness to face it without fear. He's not scared because there really isn't anything to be scared of. He knows he will succeed.  _

_ At any cost. _

Connor stares at his hands, crossed in front of him, stiff and frozen, and for a small, lung-crushing moment he does not recognize them as his own. 

That memory was not his. 

Or this body had not experienced it, at the very least. Connor had recognized the elevator as the one at the Phillips rooftop in August. The Emma Phillips situation in which Connor- or his predecessor, the  _ first  _ Connor- had perished. The memories they'd recovered from it had been uploaded onto him (the replacement Connor) but he'd never- it had never felt like- it had been like watching a first-person movie. This felt similar to the little blip he'd had on the highway, where he'd caught a glimpse of his predecessor's last few moments of existence. But that one had been so fast he'd barely had time to process it. This one was longer, more stable, and much more vivid. The other one had just been a blind moment of panic and adrenaline. This one felt different. More organized. Like Connor had stolen the memory. Like in those few moments, Connor's body had not been his own.

_ \- Software Instability ^ _

He looked down at his hands again, slowly flexing the synthetic muscles under his skin. They look identical to the other Connor's. Veins, freckles. Smooth, fingerprint-less fingertips. But  _ he's  _ moving them. He's not in somebody else's memory anymore. These are  _ his _ hands.

( _ Cyberlife property.) _

He tried to shake it off. This was not the first time today he'd had issues with his memory and he was growing concerned there might be a larger issue at the heart of the problem. Maybe he was running defective or corrupted software. Maybe Reed's punch had done more damage than he'd thought. 

Or perhaps, even more worryingly, the issue wasn't with the software at all. Maybe he's-

The elevator came to a stop. They were not on the right floor, but Connor wasn't particularly concerned about it because staring back at him through the gate, hands shoved in her pockets and looking like she'd just gone through all five stages of grief in two seconds, was the detective.

She looked at Connor.

Connor looked back.

"Fuck," she said, which summed up Connor's thoughts pretty precisely.

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I know I said I'd post this chapter a week after chapter 2.  
> It's been a whole year.  
> My bad, guys. It's been a pretty wacky-ass time. I re-wrote this chapter at least 8 or 9 times and no, that's not an exaggeration. So far the detective has not had too much 'screentime' but that's about to change! 
> 
> Anyway. Thank you so much for your kind comments! They're actually what brought me back to this fic. Seriously. Your feedback actually, genuinely makes my day. This fic is very near and dear to me. I have a whole story charted out, I've just been struggling to implement it all. I appreciate you spending your time reading this and I'm very sorry for the long hiatus. Let me know your thoughts and what you want to see next/questions you may have! 
> 
> See you in the next chapter!

**Author's Note:**

> if connor punched me in the face i'd thank him


End file.
